The key question which they have not answered is how did the battery become depleted?

(A depleted battery that will not recharge is a consequence not a cause.)

Options

a) Battery was faulty and would not hold charge
b) Battery became depleted because dc charging was not working
c) Vehicle fault that drained battery
d) Something else

b) and c) should be a warranty claim. a) The battery is a consumable but a good will contribution would be in order since six months is far less than a reasonable expected life for the battery. If necessary using the word reasonable is often a trigger to action since it is well used as a legal term.

You need them to fully investigate cause otherwise a second battery could just become toast like the first one.

Ask to talk to the chief technician about it to be more confident you are talking to somebody who is able to take a systems view of the whole car.

Keep a diary of events, names, comments and statements in case you have to escalate in order to get a satisfactory response.

Hope this helps.

 

The 12v sockets power down after 30mins or so of the car being switched off when the car isn’t charging so it’s not possible to leave something plugged in and drain the battery.

I’d push back politely but firmly. No way that should be coming out of your pocket.

 

Ridiculous to suggest it isn’t covered. If you buy a decent 12 volt battery from Halfords it comes with a 3 year warranty.
My front brake pads failed after 400 miles. Perhaps they are buying them from the same Chinese factory as the 12 volt batteries?

 

It is mind boggling that you are being treated in this way!

Under the Consumer Rights Act, within 6 months "It’s assumed in law that the fault was present at the time of purchase unless the seller can prove otherwise"

I suggest you speak to the service manager and explain that you expect your car to be repaired under warranty for no charge or you will be contacting BMW HQ to make a formal complaint.

Good luck.

Source Your legal rights | AA

 

It is mind boggling that you are being treated in this way!

Under the Consumer Rights Act, within 6 months "It’s assumed in law that the fault was present at the time of purchase unless the seller can prove otherwise"

I suggest you speak to the service manager and explain that you expect your car to be repaired under warranty for no charge or you will be contacting BMW HQ to make a formal complaint.

Good luck.

Source Your legal rights | AA

How do you get a hold of BMW HQ?

 

A BMW (Mondial) technician attended the vehicle on Thursday and did some testing. He said the DC wasn't charging the 12v. He wanted to get it towed, but he said it was ok to drive. It was less hassle for me to take it into the garage, so I did.

The garage are saying that their testing shows the DC charging is fine.

They're concentrating on the depleted battery rather than the on-screen message and the report I got from the BMW tech.

I nearly had a heart attack when they told me their logic for making me pay. I'm not sure I've recovered!

 

Canbus shuts down the 12v sockets immediately on my i3 once it’s off and locked. It’s pretty clear that the inverter has not been charging the 12v or there is a fault in the car’s wiring somewhere or the battery was duff in the first place. Tell ‘em to stick their explanation where the sun don’t shine! You want the battery replaced, the error found and repaired and a courtesy car while they sort yours out.

Do not back down!

 

I cannot understand why you have been told such utter rubbish. A 6 month old car with a fault is BMW's responsibility to repair FOC. If you cannot get any sense out of this BMW dealer take your car elsewhere and speak to BMW yourself to get this sorted out.

 

I know! However I can't drive the car to another dealer as the battery is flat.

 

Might be time for Honest John to intervene ...

 

I know nothing about the BMWi3 12v battery but it seems that it's an ongoing issue worldwide. This forum has a thread on the very subject.

Warranty replacement of 12 V battery - Page 2 - BMW i3 Forum

If this was my car I would be in the face of the BMW dealer's manager daily - showing him/her such worldwide forum evidence and demanding professional action.

I have much experience of a similar thing in the Nissan Leaf where the onboard systems fail randomly to keep the 12v DC battery healthy. Many threads in here on that topic. Nissan consistently denied all knowledge of that issue too. I eventually resorted to a monthly connection to a smart charger for 24 hours to condition the 12v battery. Should not be necessary but life is too short to stress over such things.

The BMW problem seems to be even deeper than the Leaf one though. But one thing that is very clear is that a 6m old 12v battery that cannot hold a charge must be replaced under its own warranty - quite apart from any car issues.

 

I know nothing about the BMWi3 12v battery but it seems that it's an ongoing issue worldwide. This forum has a thread on the very subject.

Warranty replacement of 12 V battery - Page 2 - BMW i3 Forum

If this was my car I would be in the face of the BMW dealer's manager daily - showing him/her such worldwide forum evidence and demanding professional action.

I have much experience of a similar thing in the Nissan Leaf where the onboard systems fail randomly to keep the 12v DC battery healthy. Many threads in here on that topic. Nissan consistently denied all knowledge of that issue too. I eventually resorted to a monthly connection to a smart charger for 24 hours to condition the 12v battery. Should not be necessary but life is too short to stress over such things.

The BMW problem seems to be even deeper than the Leaf one though. But one thing that is very clear is that a 6m old 12v battery that cannot hold a charge must be replaced under its own warranty - quite apart from any car issues.

Great reference:

This is from it:

'The distributed computing system relies on a computer message to tell various modules to shut down when you turn the car off. If one or more of them is not getting the signal, it will discharge your battery. If the sensors are not reporting the actual voltage reading of the battery, it won't get charged. A static discharge test should show if the system is drawing excessive power when off. The clock, alarm, and remote entry systems don't use a huge amount of power, and the normal range of discharge is known...it's not that hard to measure, and should point to the problem. It's also not hard to test the DC-DC supply that provides the 12-vdc.'

So module not shutting down or voltage sensor not working are two possibilities along with dc charger failure.

 

Was really interested in buying an i3 a while back, but I think I’ll stick to Lexus where the dealers actually value their customers.

 

I spoke to a BMW i person on the phone who talked to the dealer, phoned me back and told me that BMW wouldn't be getting involved. Do you know of a department that I should contact that may be of more help?

You really must put your complaint in writing to both BMW and the dealership concerned if they are as unwilling to help as you have said in your post. The vehicle obviously has a fault and if they are unable or unwilling to sort it out under warranty then get the car independently inspected and armed with a written report do what you need to to get the car repaired and recover the costs. Is the dealership your vehicle is at the supplying one?

 

The contractual issues are obvious and BMW have lots of questions to answer there.

From an engineering perspective, I doubt that the battery is dead. When it has depleted that much the electronics will recognise this and prevent further charging. What you need to do if it is really in a very bad state is to take it out, put a 'dumb' charger on it for a day, then put a high spec desulphation charger on it for at least 48 further hours.

If it does not come back to life then, yes, it is faulty but more so I would say it was already faulty the day it was made.

Good luck!

 

As @donald says, the 12v battery is probably still OK if it is properly conditioned by someone who understands the process. But the danger here is that you are being sidetracked by the physical 12v battery so that the potentially real problem can be ignored.

This is a dual problem. Either:-

#1. The 12v battery is faulty and nothing relating to the car caused it to fail.
#2. The 12v battery has been fully discharged due to a fault in the car's systems.

If the 12v battery is indeed faulty and no matter how much it is given the kiss of life it refuses to hold a charge then the way forward is clear. It is inside its own warranty period and just needs to be replaced by the supplier. Then the car should again operate correctly and we move on.

If the 12v battery can be brought back to life and holds a charge again then the discharge was indeed caused by the car and that fault needs diagnosing and fixing - because simply replacing the 12v battery ( Under warranty or at owners cost) will not have solved the underlying problem.

Sadly not many professional car mechanics have even a basic understanding of the black art of 12v lead/acid battery maintenance and conditioning. These units are regarded as being as disposable as an oil filter and it is always far cheaper to just replace it rather than spending a few hours of mechanic labour to even investigate an issue. It's a simple cost/benefit exercise. This means that they will always want to bin the battery and sell a new one. It may well work in this case. And on balance that may be the way to proceed. Just insist on it being replaced under its own warranty. Quite apart from the cars' warranty. Then wait to see if the car zaps that one. At which time you are in a very strong position to demand not only full repair but also compensation and a courtesy car as they do that.

 

If you have the battery replaced by BMW they will probably give you a 12 month warranty - ironic that they can't honour a 6 month old factory unit (irrespective of whats at fault)

 

I don't think I said, but they told me that the problem is me charging my phone and a dashcam from the car. Both of these are simply plugged into a cigarette lighter, nothing is hard wired into the battery.

It just gets more ridiculous.

Does anyone have a number for BMW?!

 

My dash cam is also wired to the cigarette lighter without any issue.

Try the following link for the contact info.Contact BMW UK | BMW UK

 

Hope you have had a result with BMW over your 12v battery issue.

 

If I recall, ICE BMWs have built in software that isolates non essential electrics if a 12 volt battery is likely to become fully discharged. Is anything similar built into the i3. I confess that I don’t know.

 

My only observation with using the centre console outlet to power my dash cam has been that it seems to power on and off in an odd way. Previously I had the same dash cam fitted to a Prius Plug-in and that worked exactly as expected. The dash cam would power up as soon as the car was turned on to "ready" and would power off as soon as the car was turned off. In the i3 the dash cam seems to stay powered on after the car has been turned off, and presumably turns off some unknown time later.

All I've noticed is that the dash cam doesn't power off when the car is turned off, but stays on until after I've got out of the car. I'm not sure when it powers off, but it does always seem to be powered off whenever I next get in the car. I have wondered if the power to the centre console outlet comes on whenever the car wakes up, for example when using Connected Drive. I need to go and take the card out of the camera and see how long it stays recording after I've parked up.

 

Normally, in any BMW I’ve ever owned, they stay live for 15 mins after the car is switched off.

So check the lights on the dash cam when you shut down the car, then go back out in 20 and see if they have stopped then.

 

As others have said this is ridiculous. Neither a dashcam or a phone is going to draw enough power that the DC/DC converter will even notice the increase in load, and since the sockets power down when the car is unattended they won’t be causing a parasitic drain. 12V lead acid batteries should last at least 3 years and it’s pretty unusual for them to fail in under this time so if it has it’s not fit for purpose. My money would be on the DC/DC.

I’ve just recently had a message come up on my Model S starting 12V Battery needs service - it’s a few months over 3 years old. When I contacted Tesla they said they were out of stock and would contact me when a new one became available and in the meantime make sure the main battery stayed well charged. Unlike the hybrids I work on (and some EVs) it appears the DC/DC on the Model S remains active even when the vehicle is powered down so it can support a failing 12V battery. The problem comes if it fails completely or the main battery drops to a low % charge then the 12V system powers down and the car is dead until jumped. It also apparently inhibits software updates because during those the 12V battery has to power up the systems without support.

Tesla sent a technician out to my home where he swapped the battery on the drive in 20 mins. When I asked what the charge was they stated it was being done under goodwill because they seem to have had a batch of dodgy 12V batteries otherwise cost would have been around £150. My car is well out of the main warranty at 95k miles so I was pleasantly surprised. That’s on a battery that was probably 3.5 years old so out of the reasonable period - a six month old battery should definitely not be failing and probably wasn’t, although if it’s now been deep discharged it will have suffered permanent loss of capacity in any event. BMW should definitely be fixing this FOC under the SOG act let alone the warranty. I had a similar issue with Toyota with my PiP and the infotainment stack where they initially refused to fix it because the cost was high - it’s rather soured my opinion of Toyota and their legendary reliability!

 

I am wondering if you could formally reject the car as they have not been able to fix the fault?

The other thing is, how did you finance the purchase? If it was by bank loan, HP (if you paid a deposit by credit card, that would be very helpfull - my memory might be a bit sketchy here but even if you use a credit card as part-payment the credit card company has to refund the whole purchase and they sue the seller *edit - max allowed is £30,000) etc there may be recourse in the T&Cs (Consumer Credit Act) if there is a dispute that cannot be resolved?

As someone else has said, maybe get Honest John on side and also Which? who are interested in faulty goods and how manufacturers deal with them.

Time for you to play dirty: their treatment of you is outrageous and it is clear that a fault on a 6 month old car means the goods are not fit for purpose (comes back to my first point about rejecting the car).

Log everything, get names of people you have spoken to and tell them you are prepared to take legal action and put this in writing to the dealer’s manager and also to the registered office of the legal entity that owns the dealership - Companies House will list the directors’ names. Quote the Consumers Rights Act 2015 in your letter. The registered office of a limited company has a legal duty to respond to any letters / correspondence received at its registered office address.

This will demonstrate that you are not going to be fobbed off.

I’ve just looked at the Consumers Right Act 2015 and it states that a car (goods) must be of satisfactory condition and fit for purpose.

A dealer has one attempt to fix a fault and you are entitled to reject the car after 30 days and within six months (crucial here as you said the car is six months old) and get a full refund (less usage of the car) as the onus is on them to prove the fault wasn’t there when they sold the car to you. After six months the onus is on you to prove the fault was there when you purchased the car.